If you have read the ST that I read this morning, you might have caught sight or read the article on "Gifted programme alumni raise money".
This was an extended article featured on the topic of more new take-ups for the ST Pocket Money Fund.
I must admit that it was the title that first caught my eye. Rarely does one read (or perhaps I have not been reading the papers frequently enough) about the GEP students giving back to the society that has given them so much. Afterall, an entire branch exists within the Ministry of Education, Singapore to support the development of programmes for this special group of students and many of them, I would like to believe, should have gone on to experience some form of academic success if not exactly graduating the top of their cohort each year.
Yet when I read the article, something struck me as not quite right. The total sum raised by the alumni and teachers from the GEP was a mere $3,164.
Now, I don't mean to discredit their good intentions (afterall, every single cent counts in charity even that 10cents that one drops into the tins of students selling flags along the road). And to be fair to them, perhaps they all do charitable work (in form or another) as individuals and perhaps some of them might have even committed large sums of monies to charitable organisations in their personal capacity.
However, a quick calculation in my mind puts the average donation that night as $5 per person. No doubt, the mode of fund-raising was not exactly an effective one to begin with (they were hawking to each other their 'unwanted'?/'prized'? items such as "books, clothes, art pieces and EVEN a Louis Vutton bag" (emphasis, mine)) yet I thought that they could afford to hold the event at Raffles Town Club, surely, they can do better than $5 per person?
My issues are as follow:
1. Given that they're GEP alumni (students who have benefited from the system) and teachers (who might have seen this an effort to inculcate right values in the students who have passed through their hands), and they are supposed to be high-ability (our system's definition stops short of calling them geniuses cos they are not) students, surely the organisers can come up with a better way to raise funds other than getting the crowd to 'donate' their items?
2. Granted that the event might not have been organised by the GEP alumni or teachers and they were merely told to bring along items that they want to donate, surely, each and every one of them can afford to fork out more than $5 on average for the cause? Short of telling me that one person at the event bidded $1000 for a second-hand used Louis Vutton bag, and contributed to 1/3 of the total amount raised (and that person is definitely generous then), what about the rest of the 599 persons who attended the function?
3. If much of the monies that was given by each individual (such as buying the tickets for the event) was used to cover the cost of organising the event, surely given the GEP alumni network, they should be able to source for sponsorships or work out alternative methods / ways to cut cost to as low as possible?
$3k is what is raised in a bazzar sale in NIE when we, as mere students (and many a times deemed less academically inclined by the rest of the tertiary population as they see us as being unable to make it to NUS Arts and Social Sciences before pursuing a post-grad diploma in Education) in our undergraduate years, hawk items like Deuter bags, papyrus art work, handmade handicrafts etc etc within the small community of NIE at the Bukit Timah campus.
$3k is nothing to shout about for 600 people who perhaps more than 1/3 (I am stretching the numbers for GEP teachers here as they are afterall a very small and select community) of them have benefited from the society who have invested much of their financial and human resources into developing them to become the cream of their crop.
If the newspaper report have been an incomplete one (in that they raised a much higher total sum from their event and it is just that ST Pocket Money fund was allocated the amount of $3k), I sure hope as hell that the GEP students and teachers who have read the article would be 'critical'?/'commonsensical'? enough to realise that the article doesn't quite paint a good, let alone flattering, picture of them.
Hell, $5 is what I used to spend, with nary a thought, on buying a cuppa.
Such a disgrace.
This was an extended article featured on the topic of more new take-ups for the ST Pocket Money Fund.
I must admit that it was the title that first caught my eye. Rarely does one read (or perhaps I have not been reading the papers frequently enough) about the GEP students giving back to the society that has given them so much. Afterall, an entire branch exists within the Ministry of Education, Singapore to support the development of programmes for this special group of students and many of them, I would like to believe, should have gone on to experience some form of academic success if not exactly graduating the top of their cohort each year.
Yet when I read the article, something struck me as not quite right. The total sum raised by the alumni and teachers from the GEP was a mere $3,164.
Now, I don't mean to discredit their good intentions (afterall, every single cent counts in charity even that 10cents that one drops into the tins of students selling flags along the road). And to be fair to them, perhaps they all do charitable work (in form or another) as individuals and perhaps some of them might have even committed large sums of monies to charitable organisations in their personal capacity.
However, a quick calculation in my mind puts the average donation that night as $5 per person. No doubt, the mode of fund-raising was not exactly an effective one to begin with (they were hawking to each other their 'unwanted'?/'prized'? items such as "books, clothes, art pieces and EVEN a Louis Vutton bag" (emphasis, mine)) yet I thought that they could afford to hold the event at Raffles Town Club, surely, they can do better than $5 per person?
My issues are as follow:
1. Given that they're GEP alumni (students who have benefited from the system) and teachers (who might have seen this an effort to inculcate right values in the students who have passed through their hands), and they are supposed to be high-ability (our system's definition stops short of calling them geniuses cos they are not) students, surely the organisers can come up with a better way to raise funds other than getting the crowd to 'donate' their items?
2. Granted that the event might not have been organised by the GEP alumni or teachers and they were merely told to bring along items that they want to donate, surely, each and every one of them can afford to fork out more than $5 on average for the cause? Short of telling me that one person at the event bidded $1000 for a second-hand used Louis Vutton bag, and contributed to 1/3 of the total amount raised (and that person is definitely generous then), what about the rest of the 599 persons who attended the function?
3. If much of the monies that was given by each individual (such as buying the tickets for the event) was used to cover the cost of organising the event, surely given the GEP alumni network, they should be able to source for sponsorships or work out alternative methods / ways to cut cost to as low as possible?
$3k is what is raised in a bazzar sale in NIE when we, as mere students (and many a times deemed less academically inclined by the rest of the tertiary population as they see us as being unable to make it to NUS Arts and Social Sciences before pursuing a post-grad diploma in Education) in our undergraduate years, hawk items like Deuter bags, papyrus art work, handmade handicrafts etc etc within the small community of NIE at the Bukit Timah campus.
$3k is nothing to shout about for 600 people who perhaps more than 1/3 (I am stretching the numbers for GEP teachers here as they are afterall a very small and select community) of them have benefited from the society who have invested much of their financial and human resources into developing them to become the cream of their crop.
If the newspaper report have been an incomplete one (in that they raised a much higher total sum from their event and it is just that ST Pocket Money fund was allocated the amount of $3k), I sure hope as hell that the GEP students and teachers who have read the article would be 'critical'?/'commonsensical'? enough to realise that the article doesn't quite paint a good, let alone flattering, picture of them.
Hell, $5 is what I used to spend, with nary a thought, on buying a cuppa.
Such a disgrace.
